DAY 11 DAY 7 SILVERSEA SPIRIT - COZUMEL, MEXICO

Before dinner we had a pre-dinner drink at The Bar.  For those of you who have not sailed Spirit this lounge is located on deck 5 near the reception desk.  It is a beautiful lounge with a vibrant bar and one of the most beautiful lounges we have enjoyed at sea or on land.  There are lots of places to sit and we sit at one of several locations that have a table and two chairs.  If you want to sit with others there are plenty of areas to sit in the lounge as well.  Jose took good care of us, remembering not only our names but also our drink preferences.

We then made our way to dinner at The Restaurant.   We sat at the same table that we sat at when we had dinner the other night.  The restaurant was not very busy and we enjoyed a very quiet meal.

Spirit remained in port until 10:00 PM and all passengers needed to be back on board by 9:30 PM.  I understand from someone that the area near the ship was actually constructed by Carnival.  I know they built the area adjacent to the terminal area of Grand Turk.

There were several places around the ship to listen to music after dinner, but we just called it a night and enjoyed the comfort of our room.

After Spirit departed at 10:00 PM, we headed to our next port of call in Cozumel, Mexico.

The seas were calm and we slept very well and started our morning the way we have started each morning since we boarded.  Keith was up first and worked out at the Fitness Center and a short while later we had breakfast in our room thanks to Butler Probha.

We then got ready to visit Cozumel.  We have visited Cozumel numerous times. Our first visit was in the mid-1990’s on board the Century which was one of several ships we sailed back then with Celebrity Cruises and our most recent visit was a couple of years ago on-board Crystal Serenity.  In between, we visited this port on several times and on various cruise ships and cruise lines. 

We arrived to Cozumel at 8:00 AM.  Two ships (Celebrity and Royal Caribbean) were already in port, at another pier, at the time of our arrival and two other ships (NCL and Carnival) were arriving to port shortly after we arrived. 

It was overcast and it had rained prior to our arrival.

On our second visit to Cozumel, we cruised with friends Larry and Anne and their son Chad along with our children Jennifer and Eric. They actually assigned the ships Priest to our table and he would give us tips as to what to do in each port.  He was not your typical priest in terms of his background including that he said he had been a runner for the Mafia.  For Cozumel he said we should go to Senor Frogs so we all did so it brought back memories when we passed by it today.  We were 17 years younger than we are today and we can remember Keith, Anne and Larry on line dance and getting tastes of mixed drinks during the dance.  Anne Marie was the wiser one and sat with the kids and enjoyed a soft drink. 

We do want to mention that we have never been to Hooters; only seen them from the outside such as today.

Many of the stores are different than back in 1998 and do reflect that Cozumel has a lot of tourism including many cruise ships that visit and there are many more upscale shops.

As we walked we realized that we were fortunate that we missed the heavy rains, as there were lots of large puddles of water.  We enjoyed a two-hour walk and with the cloud cover it was very comfortable walking around. 

There was a military exercise which began when we first arrived and continued even after we returned to the ship.

This was our last port of call and in addition to not taking any tours, other than Key West where we purchased a water proof bag to protect Keith’s DSLR camera as it was raining, we didn’t make on purchase.   Although we are not big shoppers when we travel, this still might have been a first.  We did look for the grand kids but, we didn’t see anything that would work for them.

We enjoyed the rest of the day on board the Spirit. We worked out a couple of times at the Fitness Center and we read, wrote and watched another movie.  We also had lunch at La Terrazza and will be dining there this evening.

It also poured in the afternoon for quite awhile so we were fortunate to get out in the morning and not to encounter any rain.

Keith & Anne Marie